Outspoken
by AetherianMonarch
Summary: When your family is all you know, when your best friend, brother, and guardian shadows your every move, you want to find your place. Regardless of who makes home for you. And Renesmee comes to find that her place belongs among color, cold, and a dark, dark humor.


_A/N: Hello everyone. This is my first fanfiction in a couple of years, I suppose. I've been at school (gasp) working on my writing, especially my tendencies to be bombastic and overly descriptive._

_This story has actually been swimming around in my head for more than a year now, so hopefully if I can get enough feedback I will be able to finish it all the way._

_Warning: I cannot help being opposed to the whole Jacob and Renesmee pairing. It seems wrong to me in ways that I can explain if you wish to hear my opinion in a friendly message. Now, last but not least—_

_Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer created the characters of Twilight and the potential behind them. All I did was read too many mangas and have an overactive imagination. And insert a supremely irregular character of my own creation._

_**Chapter I: Maimed**_

The sky was a dark, mottled, orange-grey, and it bathed her in a warmth that would otherwise chill the human sense. A scent belonged to the light, and it smelled of crushed pine needles and turned, moist soil.

Renesmee Cullen breathed in deeply.

A howl echoed off the surrounding wood, through the tips of the trees and floated up to the heavens. Jacob must have taken the others out on patrol. And perhaps a hunt. Renesmee smiled. He'd been restless in and around the house to the point of becoming physically destructive. At least her grandmother wouldn't have to worry about any rodent pests in her garden for a while.

She welcomed this time of solitude. The presence of Jacob Black was a facet in her life, a presence that had existed for her since the day of her birth. But the way he seemed to attempt to fill her life in every aspect was beginning to chafe and choke the invisible boundaries around their relationship. She couldn't breathe. Literally. He would always stand too close, and the mere size of him, where it once created a sense of awe and safety, now seemed to impede her view in every direction. Especially the future.

Renesmee walked on a bit further, jogged, and then thrust herself into a full-on sprint towards the south-east. She chose to leave the house with her boots this time; she liked hearing the sound of her existence beneath her instead of the phantom silence she was capable of.

She stopped, inhaling sharply. Sawdust. A flavor she couldn't quite place.

_Wild child._

Renesmee's borrowed habits from her father made her completely still. She would have slowly turned to face her addresser, had the soft tenor tones not reverberated off of every surface around her like organ pitches in a cathedral.

_Seems this one runs with wolves. Ah, my sweet, you reek._

"Show yourself." Her tones were level. She knew she had to be dealing with someone with senses on par with or above her own if he had the gall to comment on her scent. "Reek" had caused her heart to twinge. Jacob's essence was strong but not wholly unpleasant. Usually only people like her family had discomfort about it.

_Which part, little bird? I'm directly opposed to indecent exposure, you know._

"All of you," Renesmee answered, feeling like her body was betraying her. Her lips were pulling at the corners.

_I think not. We've not yet reached that stage in our relationship. It would be improper, considering how little you know about me._

The words of the disembodied voice caused a tick in Renesmee's brain. She suddenly started to feel very small and exposed, pinned to a slide with light from the microscope intensified with the focusing of the lens.

_Right, bambina?_ came a murmur into her left ear.

She spun, arms up in the position her Uncle Jasper had shown her, breathless, and was promptly robbed of any remaining breath in her lungs.

The grinning dark-haired young man in front of her was maimed. Vivid, jagged scars criss-crossed his throat, framing his Adam's apple. The left eye was not covered by what looked to be a stainless steel half mask on the right side of his face, and it creased its brow in an expression of exasperated boredom.

_If I could grow a beard long enough, I'd cover it, bird._

Renesmee sucked in a breath and tried to look away but found her eyes magnetized to the mutilation of his neck in what she could only mournfully call both fascination and anguish. He walked towards her, steps soundless and unhurried. She found herself backing up and circling him at the same time, careful to keep her back to the trees in the clearing.

_I see you spend too much time with your canine companions. Stop moving._

She stopped. The command was firm and lacked the soft levity of his previous comments. Renesmee swallowed as he drew near. Her mouth was so dry.

He stopped within a few inches of her, head level, eye downcast to meet her wide-eyed gaze. The words were a murmured caress that echoed in stereo just inside her ears.

_Now isn't this better? Ogle all you like._

Forcefully prohibiting her eyes from returning below his angular jawline, she pinned her focus on the lips that never moved, thinking safety. False. The glinting she thought she had seen earlier in the form of a grin was in truth two rings spaced evenly on his bottom lip. The smile she had imagined was actually a minor frown, a curvature of disinterest or disdain.

His nose was slightly hooked; the bridge, along with the prominent cheekbones and thick, arched brows created darkness in the middle of his face. His left eye shone from inside this darkness, past long, thick lashes, and Renesmee found herself enraptured by the brilliance of penetrating blue-green hazel.

He leaned in suddenly so that their chins were level, and long, dark wavy bangs tickled her face. Silence. Then-

_Touch me, I'm real!_ came a high-pitched falsetto.

Renesmee fell back and against the pine behind her, choking with uncontrolled laughter. He was so absurd. He was absurd and dangerous. He was dangerous because he was so absurd. Every time she looked when his "voice" sounded on her ear or echoed in her head, his face had remained fixed and poker-like.

Though his eye was sparkling brightly.

"Who...are you?" Renesmee finally managed.

_If I told you, I'd have to spank you._

She died. She blushed and died thoroughly. When she finally looked up she was greeted by the sight of a wide, blazing white smile. It was sharp and predatory-and also full of honest, purely concentrated amusement.

_Would you still like me to tell you?_

"Is there an option...not to be spanked?" she ventured, pouring hope into her eyes and struggling to avoid impending hysteria.

_No, little bird._ He straightened, and his face resumed its normal expression of darkness. _And unfortunately, it looks as though I have no more time to play with you today. Your bodyguard cometh like the fall of Babel._ He turned and began to walk away.

"Wait." Distress. He had no right to leave such an impression without providing a signature. "Do you come to this part of the forest often?"

_My. How forward._ He turned his head while continuing to walk. _I'll see you again._

"When?" she called, trying not to sound so urgent.

He disappeared into the brush without another word of the disembodied tenor.

Not a minute later, Jacob came barreling into the clearing in wolf form, chest heaving. She was sure he was inhaling the too fresh scent of the maimed young man. Sawdust and...herbs. Mint? A huge wolf eye pinned her impatiently, and a growl was rumbling into a crescendo.

"Calm down, Jake. He was a nobody."

The crescendo climbed after "he".

"Alright. He was a curious nobody. But a nobody nonetheless."

Jacob phased out. Renesmee had grown accustomed to seeing him in the barest of forms growing up, and had accepted it as normalcy until her body began to shape into the well-formed curves her father had grudgingly admitted came from her dead grandmother. She turned her head to the left and ignored the heat in her cheeks while he hastily pulled on some cut-offs. The words to voice her discomfort always froze in her throat. She felt that if she were to touch on the topic it would be infringing on some carefully unspoken taboo in their relationship. "Imprinting" already left a sour taste in her mouth.

"You can tell me that crap when a nobody comes along that doesn't have your particular scent," he growled, pulling at the drawstrings.

She knew the man was like her. She had known the moment she felt the warmth of his proximity and seen his hazel eye. No mere human could look like he did and literally "speak" their minds.

"What I really want to know," Jacob continued gruffly, "Is why you're so intent on hiding him from me." He looked at her with that look of frustrated concern. Brotherly. Parent-like. And also... But hopefully not quite...

"I doubt he's the type to take your kind of interrogation methods seriously," Renesmee answered dryly.

"Oh?" Jacob had always loved fixer-uppers. He strode to stand in front of her, too close as always.

"Mm. Jake. People like me...you know we have to keep a low profile." She tried to appeal to his sense of empathy. With her as the example, of course. "He was just curious, I'm sure." She turned on the glisten in her deep brown eyes for added effect.

Jacob made an about-face. Score. "Well the next time he feels inclined to be curious, let us both hope I'm not in a cat-killing mood." He began to march homeward, to the northwest, and Renesmee let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She fell into step behind him.

_'Fenrir', little bird._ Renesmee jerked her head around, but just as she imagined, the voice only seemed to echo off the inside of her skull. Jacob was walking as before.

_But have no fear. You shall be spanked. Eventually._

She stifled a guffaw.

_Until next time...Wren._

Renesmee tilted her head and smiled. Regardless of how he knew anything about her, his epithet was still a whole three floors up from "Nessie".

_A/N: Please leave a review if you like. Or don't if you don't want to. …I kind of want Fenrir to spank me a little…_


End file.
